


Learn The World Has Teeth

by violentdarlings



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: BAMF Padmé Amidala, Consensual Violence, Darth Vader Redemption, F/M, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Star Wars Prequel Trilogy & Pre-Star Wars: Original Trilogy, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29940972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Naboo amends their constitution to crown a new Queen. In the time preceding the one-year anniversary of the formation of the Empire, Vader is sent to summon the Queen to the Imperial Palace.As always, Padmé is several steps ahead of him.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Darth Vader
Comments: 15
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Vaderdala makes my heart go pitter patter.

“My boy.”

Sidious’ voice creeps into his ears like poison dripping from a serpent’s tooth. Vader shifts on his knees slightly. He has been here for over an hour already, the raw stumps of his legs pressing agonizingly on the bare durasteel of his replacement limbs. Sidious has been silent for most of it, lost in his own thoughts. It pleases him to feel the dull hum of Vader’s discomfort, or the roar of his outright pain. His Master enjoys his little games.

“What is thy will, my Master?”

Sidious heaves out a heavy sigh. “There is trouble on my home planet. The Constitution has been amended to crown a new Queen, far older than the troublesome harridans usually are. My spies inform me she is something of a force to be reckoned with. They call her Amidala.”

For a moment, there is nothing in and around Vader but silence, and him encapsulated in it, drowning.

“Amidala.” For a moment, he does not recognize the deep rumble as his own voice. It happened often in the early days of his creation, but not since.

“Indeed.” Sidious’ voice is sober, but Vader can feel the waves of vicious humour rolling off him, even as it is mixed with frustration. He is pleased Vader is suffering. He is irritated that this new Queen stands in his path. “Such an insult to your poor, dearly departed wife. Crowning an upstart queen with her regnal name – it tarnishes dear Padmé’s memory.”

Vader ignores the sickly sweet tinge that has come into Sidious’ voice. Just another game.

“She has ignored my summons to appear here in Imperial Palace. You will go to Naboo, and impress upon the Queen that she is an exceedingly small player in a very large game, and that I will not tolerate disobedience. I want her here by the moon’s turn, or there will be consequences.”

Vader is dismissed, and as he leaves his Master’s presence, he agrees with him, although not without some bitterness. There are always consequences.

Vader has learnt his Master’s lessons well.

The Queen is painted and draped in the usual accoutrements of a queen of the Naboo, but it hardly matters. Vader would be able to recognize Padmé with both his eyes closed, Force-blind through a lead-lined wall.

It is her. She is no longer pregnant, which makes sense; it has been almost a year since the Empire was formed, and yet Vader half-expects to see her as he had last; sprawled on the fiery ground of Mustafar, bruising livid around her throat, belly swollen with their growing child. But here she is, surrounded by her handmaidens, the last person left who Skywalker loved.

The light is dimming. Only a sliver of sun is left peering over the horizon, rapidly sinking. He has made the Queen wait; his appointment was well over an hour ago, but Vader prefers the near-darkness to the light. He belongs in the shadow, a ghost clad in a dead man’s flesh and onyx-black armour imbued only with glimmering darkness. Already his presence precedes him; he can see breath billowing on the icy air, from the small group huddled around the throne. Padmé, and her handmaidens.

Vader pauses at the threshold of the throne room, still cloaked in shadow.

“You are far older than your predecessors, your Majesty.”

If he thought to surprise her, he is disappointed. Two or three of the handmaidens startle, but Padmé herself is still as stone, except for her eyes, cold and glimmering in the dim light.

“We live in an Empire now, not a Republic.” The sound of her voice is icier than the temperature in the room. “The people of Naboo felt it was time for change. For a more experienced hand at the reins.” She eyes him. “Step forward, Lord Vader.”

The heavy impact of his durasteel feet on the stone seems to echo threefold in the empty throne room. Worse is the rasp of the respirator, hissing and growling in the distance between Vader and the throne. He has never felt more inhuman, coming before his wife as he is now, neither machine nor man, but some unholy mix of the two, less than the sum of his parts.

“Your absence from the Imperial Centre has been noted, _Senator_.” He comes to a halt, arms folded across his chest, regarding the slight figure seated above him. “The Emperor requests your presence in his court on Imperial Centre, to celebrate the peace and prosperity of this first year of the Empire.”

Padmé sighs. “Regrettably, I am occupied with my duties here on Naboo, Lord Vader,” she replies. “Or is it _Darth_ Vader? Forgive me. I am unfamiliar with the appropriate term of address for a lord of the Sith.” Her eyes gain a glimmer of humour. “Although when I met with Count Dooku some years ago, I am afraid I used several terms that were both less civil and less… _theatrical_ than Darth Tyrannus.”

Sith hells, but she is quick. Quicker now, and colder too, than she ever was before, as either teenaged queen or Coruscant senator. Is that what his touch does to those he loves? Hones away the good and gentleness in them, until only the sharp edges remain? Snips, unable to forgive. Obi-Wan, the burning bright of his lightsaber as he cut Vader down to size.

“Tyrannus was no true apprentice to my Master,” Vader replies, once the silence has gone thick and oppressive between them, a stalemate that Vader does not want to break. “Lord Vader will suffice. I believe I requested this audience to be private, your Majesty.”

That polite, puzzled expression. “Surely you cannot not object to the presence of my ladies, Lord Vader. Simple women such as us are no threat to a servant of the Emperor.”

Like he doesn’t know each one of them are armed to the teeth and sworn to die in service to their queen. He recognizes Sabé, Dormé, and Eirtaé, amongst others. A flock of almost-Padmés, this one with hair just as lustrous as hers, the next with almost the same dark glitter in the eyes.

“We must return to your absence. The Emperor requests you attend him in the Imperial Palace.”

A quick flash of something in her face, gone too quick for him to follow. “The Jedi Temple,” Padmé corrects. At last, there is something in her voice other than cool courtesy.

“ _Imperial Palace_ ,” Vader retorts, the vocoder booming. “The Jedi have been exterminated, as befits such an ignoble and obsolete order.” Padmé’s eyes narrow.

“We will have to disagree on that, Lord Vader, and on the results of your visit here. I am afraid I must disappoint the Emperor this time. Naboo remains my priority, and there is much to occupy me here. I trust you will convey my regrets to the Emperor.”

She stands. He is dismissed. He cannot allow this.

“I could make you.”

Padmé, on the verge of descending the small steps from the dais that holds her throne, stills. For a moment she regards him, before returning to the seat of power that looks far too big for her small frame, settling the diaphanous folds of her silks around her.

“Unfortunately for the Emperor, Naboo is allied with over a thousand other monarchial planets.” Her eyes cut him to the bone. “Arresting a reigning monarch – without warrant or just cause – would cause him quite a significant headache indeed. And while I understand the Senate has less power than it once did, I still have enough connections to make governing his new Empire very difficult for Sheev.”

“You will refer to him as ‘Imperial Majesty’ or ‘the Emperor’,” Vader snarls, furious. How dare she sit there and be so _calm_ , while he is burning alive?

“But he gave me permission to use his first name many years ago now,” the queen replies, sweet as an unfurling blossom. “He was my mentor, after all. Surely you do not now tell me that his Imperial Majesty no longer considers me a friend to his Empire?”

The way she had uttered his Master’s title. As if even an Emperor is beneath her. Vader is so very tired. Politics and word games were never what he was good at before. That, at least, is the same.

“Padmé.” A thin eyebrow lifts at the familiarity. “Surely you are aware that things have changed.”

A coolness has come over her face, behind the veil of the paint. “My name is Amidala,” she says, and rises, prompting the flock of handmaidens to stand as well. Apparently this time there will be no reprise. “And you, Darth Vader, are out of time.”

“It is her,” he reports to his master, and Sidious’ eyes narrow. “Amidala.”

“Interesting,” he ponders. “Clearly reports of her death in the Outer Rim have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Clearly.”

Sidious ignores him. Such a thing never would have occurred before the Empire; Palpatine had cared too much then in ensuring Skywalker’s regard for him. But that time is no more. He is no longer his Master’s favoured Jedi pet to be courted and cosseted, but his apprentice. He is not treated with even a hundredth of the kindness Palpatine had bestowed upon Skywalker.

This is for the best. Vader needs no kindness, he tells himself. Only the bidding of his Master, and the Dark side.

“I take it Amidala is unaware of your previous identity.”

“No, my Master.”

“Very good. Do not inform her. I wish to know the fate of Skywalker’s child. You will return to Naboo, and if the child is living and with Amidala, you will bring it to me.”

Vader hears the words, and what lies behind them _. You are weak, and you have failed me. I desire a strong apprentice, young, malleable, blazing with the Force._

_Whole._

Vader clenches his fists. What use is he to his Master once he has been replaced? No use at all.

He is dismissed, and is almost at the door, before the voice slithers out from the shadows behind him.

“The knowledge that Amidala lives, I trust, will not affect your allegiance to me.” Vader does not allow himself to react, outwardly, although behind his shields he is seething. “Skywalker is dead. The fate of his insolent wife is no concern of yours.”

“Of course not, my Master,” he replies, but he does not turn back around. The vocoder betrays nothing but the bass monotone his Master has provided him with. “I am loyal to you alone.”

But within his chest his heart is hammering away like he doesn’t even need the implant, so certain is its beat. He was Padmé’s long before he was Palpatine’s.

It is no decision at all.

“He wants the baby.”

Padmé observes him silently, for a time that stretches into eternity. She is alone this time. Like she knows why he has come. Like she wants no witnesses this time. “Which baby do you mean?” she asks, voice poison soft. Vader can hardly bear to look at her.

“Ours.”

There is surprise, but no shock. “I didn’t think you planned on telling me,” she says, and stands, coming down the stairs until she can sit on the second-lowest. “Come and sit beside me.”

“I prefer to stand,” Vader replies stiffly, his arms crossed over his chest, spine ramrod straight. He might not be able to control himself, if he gets so close to her.

“Very well.” She is much lower than him, now; he has to crane his neck down to keep her in sight.

“So he got to you. Somehow, Sidious got to you, and you turned. And now, look at what you’ve become.” Her lips curls, scornful. “His perfect little puppet.”

Vader is barely listening. “Padmé, you must know how sorry I am, for what happened on Mustafar –” She raises her pinky finger no more than an inch, and Vader falls silent at the gesture, so attuned to her is he.

“I refuse to speak of it,” she says, voice low like a hiss. “What’s done is done. Will you help me oppose the Emperor, or will you deliver me to your Master in binders? There is no middle ground. I will die before I serve him, or you. But I will accept _your_ service, and speak on your behalf when Sidious is defeated. Your crimes are manifest, Lord Vader. You will need an advocate.”

“I care not for my own fate,” Vader dismisses.

“But you still bear some regard for me. Interesting.” She toys with a fold of her gown. “How much of you is still Anakin Skywalker?”

“None.” The word tears out of Vader on instinct. His Master has asked him this question too many times, with too many punishments when Sidious found his authenticity lacking. Padmé quirks an eyebrow.

“If you are not him, then why do you come before me, and stay your hand when I speak of treason against your Imperial master? Unless it is hubris. You wish to possess all that Anakin possessed, down to the most meagre of what was his, his thrown-aside wife.”

“I did not _throw you aside_ –” Vader breaks off, but the damage is done. Padmé is smiling like the loth-cat that got the blue-cream.

“So you _are_ still in there,” she replies archly. “Is it love, that binds you still to me? Surely not. Sith do not love, they do not need. They take, and they consume. Nothing good grows, I have been told, in the shadow of the Dark side.”

“Jedi lies,” Vader growls out. “They feared the power of the Dark side. My power. I could keep you safe.”

Padmé is laughing. A coil of something cold and sickly flexes in Vader’s belly at the derisiveness of it. “When you failed at it so profoundly before? You had the Dark side on Mustafar, as well as all your limbs. You lost. You lost so badly that you will never recover from the wounds you incurred there. I could buy a better protector for fifteen credits at the nearest spaceport.”

Damn her to every one of the Sith hells. She knows exactly how to dig her barbs into his ruined flesh. “We can debate philosophy at another time,” he rumbles. “I will aid you in your efforts to dethrone the Emperor, under certain conditions.”

Padmé sits back, satisfaction radiating from her like sunlight. “Which are?” she asks. “You will wish to be named Emperor in his place, I suppose?”

“Force, no.” Padmé jolts, and Vader remembers himself. For a moment, he had sounded like Skywalker, vocoder be damned. “Politics and jostling for power until the fortunate day some lucky dissident assassinates me and starts the whole process over again? I care not for it. I only wish for to know the fate of my child. And – and one other thing.”

Padmé regards him calmly. “Which is?”

Vader kneels, only an arms-length or two away from her on the stone floor. He is still taller than her, but a supplicant all the same. Padmé does not flinch from the proximity, as though there is nothing in Vader to fear. What a divinely sweet notion.

“If you will allow it, I want –” He looks away. The words are lodged in his throat, strangling, suffocating. How could she do anything but deny him? It was not his hands on her throat at Mustafar, but it was him all the same, his will in the Force.

“If I will allow what, precisely?” Padmé prompts. Vader coughs, the vocoder turning it into a blurt of static. Padmé’s eyes narrow. “I will not support you in destroying what remains of the Jedi. They are decimated, surely you could stay your hand in this –”

“If you will allow me be your husband again.”

The silence somehow screams.

“Let me see if I have read you right,” Padmé bites out, fury giving her voice an uneven edge. Vader’s eyes are drawn back to her, albeit unwillingly. The Queenly makeup obscures the usual signs of her rage, but the Force around her howls of it. “Just to be sure I comprehend what you have dared to say to me. You are so selfish to hinge the fate of the galaxy on whether I will love you again?”

Ah, at last. His whole existence, distilled down into one fatal sentence. How could he not see it so clear, when she renders it down for him so neatly? “Yes,” Vader replies, feverish with gratitude, mechanical hands clattering quietly as his whole body trembles. “Yes, Padmé. You understand.”

She just looks at him. Like he’s some alien insect under a microscope, a thing she’s never seen before and never wants to see again. “You are in earnest,” she murmurs, and Vader nods, not trusting the vocoder to hide the tremor in his voice should he speak. “Give me a minute.”

He does. He watches her close her eyes, breathe in, breathe out. He cannot perceive her thoughts, but the sight of her calculating the odds, of balancing probabilities and assessing outcomes, is as familiar to him as his own limbs once were. Weighing him up, like he is only a pound of flesh she has to manipulate to reach her goals.

Vader is so grateful to the very thought of it. Let him be her spirit of vengeance then, wrath incarnate, if only she will allow him to be hers.

“Well!” Padmé says eventually, and is on her feet. “If you want me as your wife, we’d better find a way to get you out of that suit. I’m not interested in a celibate marriage.” Her eyes narrow again. “Palpatine dies first.”

Vader nods, relieved beyond words. He will kill the Emperor, and in the ensuring uproar Padmé will forget about this notion of Vader recommencing his marital duties. He no longer looks like Anakin Skywalker, and it was he that Padmé had loved. Vader will take whatever scraps of her affection he can clutch at, that she will deign to give him.

Through the suit. He intends for his wife to never see him bare again.


	2. Dissolving Through The Trauma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plotting on the way to Coruscant - oops, *Imperial Centre*.

“I don’t understand your objections. You’re going to have to rough me up at least a little.”

Vader flinches.

Padme’s voice echoes out to him from the back of the small scout vessel, where she is changing out of her queenly accoutrements into something less grandiose and entirely more practical. She had removed the makeup, at least, while giving orders to her handmaidens in the throne room in Theed, Vader a silent shadow in the background. Then she had packed her bags, again under his watchful eye, slung one over each shoulder, had turned to him and asked, “Well, then, shall we go?”

He should have known then how grossly outmatched he is.

“It is unnecessary,” he replies, vocoder just a little quicker than usual. “My Master would not expect me to have laid hands on you.”

A snort, and the rustle of silk as she strips. “Sheev might be morally bankrupt and a fascist, deceiving, disloyal snake, but he’s not an idiot. He knows I’d never – what is the phrase? _Come quietly_. At least give me a black eye or a split lip. I’m sure I’m not the first woman you’ve backhanded.”

She really does expect the worst from him, doesn’t she. “The past is immaterial. You cannot expect me to strike my wife.”

Oh, that laugh. Like he’s just an amusement, a diversion. “Now is not the time to be developing a conscience, Lord Vader,” Padme says glibly. A thud echoes back to him; Vader can just picture her wrestling with her boots. “Remember, I saw holo footage of what you did to those younglings. No need to hide your baser impulses from me, I lived it.”

Yes, she did. As Mustafar. Vader eyes the console resentfully, choosing to latch onto the least offensive part of her reply. “You are not keeping up your end of our bargain. I will not be Lord Vader to you.”

A small hand clamps down on his shoulder. Vader stiffens. He hadn’t even noticed her come into the cockpit; her jumpsuit black, her hair braided up out of the way and pinned with two suspiciously long pins. Her blasters are holstered at her hip and ankle; she probably has micro grenades in the heels of her boots. This is the woman he loves. Of course it is.

“You’re quite right.”

Vader glances up at her, having nearly forgotten his last comment. Padme’s expression is too bland. There’s got to be more to it than that, and there is; he’s never known Padme not to press an advantage while she has it. “Forgive me, husband,” she croons, and Vader knows it is sarcastic, knows it is false, and it unbalances him completely all the same. “How remiss of me. I haven’t kissed you hello.”

“There is no need –”

Too late. Padme leans down, since she is only just taller than him when he is seated, and plants a smacking kiss firmly on the dome of his helmet. “Better?” she asks.

“The physical affection is unnecessary,” Vader rumbles, when he can string two words together that aren’t _Padmé_ or _more_ or _please_. “You could at least speak to me with some respect.” Padme laughs out loud at that as she drops into the copilot’s chair.

“I don’t recall that I did so to any great degree before,” she says blithely. Vader glares at the controls. She’s right, curse her.

“Do you know, Anakin loved me very much,” Padme says conversationally. Vader turns his head slightly to better eye her cautiously from the corner of his visor. “He was a wonderful husband. I’m not sure how much you, in contrast, have to bring to this marriage.”

She is mocking him.

“Skywalker was weak,” Vader grinds out in response. “Foolish, soft. Worthless. I can protect you much better than he ever could.” Padme arches an eyebrow.

“Look down.”

There is a blaster pointed directly at his codpiece. Vader curses. He’d been too busy looking at her face to even assess the threat. “I think we’ve established I don’t need your protection.” There is a hint of a smile hiding in the corners of her mouth. “What else do you have to give me?”

Stars. Surely he can think of something. “I will allow you to take power once the Emperor is dead.”

Now the smile isn’t hiding anymore. “You said yourself you don’t want the throne. I intend to restore the Republic, or a version of it, anyway. I have no designs to be Empress. So that is also, at least to me –” She shrugs. “Not worth the breath it took to speak the words.”

Not worth it. It is only all he has left to give, and it is worth nothing to her.

Vader snaps.

He slams his hand down on the console, the fury rising in him like a tide. The console creaks ominously, but does not break, thankfully, because if he had to repair it on top of everything else, he’d be very angry indeed. “You presume much,” he growls at her, and gets to his feet, the better to loom over her with his superior height. “I need not assist you. I could dump you out the airlock at this very moment, and no one would be the wiser.”

Padme stands, too. She jabs one small finger into his tabard, skirting his chest box by barely an inch. “I cannot be cowed by your temper, _husband_.” The last word comes out as a hiss, dripping venom. “You have allowed your manners to lapse since neither myself nor Obi-Wan have been around to remind you to behave.”

Vader turns, letting his rage billow around him like his cloak. “Do not mention that name to me!” he thunders as he strides into the back of the ship, intent on getting away from the hellion in the front. “He betrayed me. You betrayed me! None of this would have happened if only you had –”

A blaster shot wings out and strikes the wall, only inches from Vader’s head. He turns on his heel to face his attacker, tiny, dainty, and almost purple with rage, her weapon still in her hands. “Refrain from abusing my ship!” he bellows at her. Padme does not appear to even be listening.

“You arrogant, idiotic, _melodramatic_ coward! Poor Anakin! Master Obi-Wan was mean to me and now I’m going to dress up in a black full-body suit and pretend I don’t still have an Outer-Rim accent just to make the galaxy’s oldest, ugliest asshole happy –”

“He saved me!” Vader howls back. “He gave me back my life! Where were you? With Obi-Wan, no doubt!”

“Giving birth to your child!” Padme screeches. “Not that the baby mattered to you in the slightest when you choked me with the Force!”

“For betraying me!” Vader shouts. “For bringing Obi-Wan to kill me! You are as guilty in this as I am!” He is almost afraid. There is a dangerous light in Padme’s eyes.

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” she spits at him, her face twisted. “I cannot stand it. You are _not_ my husband, and you are no son of Shmi Skywalker. She would be horrified if she knew of the thing you have become!”

The last salvo rings out across the space between them, and Vader finds he has no words left. Neither, it seems, does Padme. She swipes a hand over her eyes.

“Oh, Anakin,” she says at last. “Look at what a mess we are.” Vader raises a hand.

“Don’t call me that,” he manages to get out, except the vocoder isn’t heavy enough to hide the tremor in his voice. Padme’s face softens.

“Sweetheart.” Vader holds out his other hand, as if he can stop the compassion radiating from her by will alone.

“Don’t,” he says. He barely knows what he’s saying. “I can’t.” Padme’s eyes are brimming over.

“Anakin,” she says again, and when Vader does not reply, it seems to be enough. Vader is stock-still, stunned, when she runs to him, just as she had on Mustafar, but Vader still manages to catch her in his arms, already sobbing, already falling to the floor, his artificial knees folding underneath him.

“Padme,” he moans, and presses his mask into her unbound hair, weeping like he has not in forever. “Don’t hate me, don’t. I couldn’t bear it.”

“I don’t,” she says, pressing feverish kisses to the crown of his helm, against the red lenses of his mask, anywhere she can reach. “I don’t, my love, I don’t. I could never hate you.”

“You should,” he bites out, lost in the cloud of her dark hair, the scent of her through the mask’s filters like the breath of life itself. “Padme, tell me, you must, did I kill our baby?”

He feels the hesitation in her. “No, sweetheart,” she says, and wraps her arms around him tighter when Vader sags, the relief making him dizzy, sapping the strength from his limbs. “You didn’t.”

Vader can find no more words after that.

The storm passes. Vader has no comprehension of how long it takes until he comes back to himself, slowly, until he can feel something other than the overwhelming grief and loss and self-loathing he has carried for so long. Underneath his mask he is a sorry sight, even more so than usual, tears drying into sticky tracks on his cheeks, salt stinging the open wounds.

“The ship,” he says at last, his voice raw from weeping. “I should return to the cockpit.”

“I put it on autopilot before I tried to shoot you.”

Vader laughs, actually laughs, even though it’s wet and disgusting and the vocoder distorts it completely. “You think of everything.”

“Only sometimes.”

Vader draws back. Padme’s eyes are red, her skin blotchy. She has been crying as well. “I never betrayed you, Anakin,” she says. “I didn’t know Obi-Wan was on the ship with me. He hid.”

Vader sighs. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says. He wants to get to his feet, his stumps are throbbing, but he’s not sure he can stand. He feels as weak as a newborn womp rat.

“It does. We have to trust each other. Anakin –” Like everything, Padme is tinged red through his lenses, but it hardly matters. His mind fills in the colours easily. “I can’t forgive you yet. You betrayed me and everything I loved. But there is no hope for either of us if we do not trust each other.”

“You ask me to betray the only person I have left,” Vader rumbles. This time, he does stand, bringing Padme up with him. She is so small. He used to be able to lift her in the crook of one arm. She feels even tinier now.

“I am asking you to correct the grievous wrong that now afflicts our galaxy. Remember our bargain. You’ll help me depose Palpatine in return for resuming our marriage.” Vader takes one step away from her, then another, although it physically aches to leave her behind.

He hears her light step behind him as he heaves his bulk into the pilot’s seat. “I do not deserve to have you back,” he replies. “But I am weak. If you will have me, I will do whatever you wish.”

Her thin arms snake over his shoulders to meet above his chest box, close to what is left of his heart. Vader stills, but leans his head back, bringing up his right hand to cover her two small ones. “It will be over eventually,” Padme tells him, although Vader wonders if she is trying to convince herself more than him. “It cannot last forever. Now, let’s get this over with.”

She removes herself from her position half-draped over his shoulders, and settles back into the copilot’s seat, squaring her shoulders. Vader leans towards her, allows himself the unconscionable liberty of cupping her cheek with his massive, black-gloved hand. “Trust,” Vader confirms, and Padme nods, her eyes shining with victory, with sadness.

“Make it convincing, Anakin.”

After all, what is one more thing to hate himself for, on the balance of all the others?

He doesn’t hit her with all of his strength, but it is revealed to Vader, as he dimly watches his own brutal fist strike Padme’s delicate face, exactly how far he has fallen.


End file.
